[DaveA]

OK, so, when I was in the dealers the other week I was stood next to a brand new M3 and the sales person asked, in passing, whether or not I would have one…

The answer was a respectful “no”… It all just looked rather, well, unnecessary to me… and if I was looking for something in that sort of price bracket I would almost certainly be stood in a Porsche dealer…

Got me thinking that whilst M cars might be capable and well engineered, they are simply cars to fit a marketing gap and that is not what M cars originally were, at least to me…

Truthfully, I feel there have only ever been three “true” M Cars… M1, E30 M3 and E36 M3 GT… These were the ones built and homologated for racing… Or, rounding that argument, each would not have been built unless it was needed to homologate a race car…

Each was rather limited in numbers and each would get that knowing look from fellow car/race nerds who happened to know and understand the significance of the car… There was something special about them other than sheer capability… BMW’s answers to the Porsche 934, Sierra Cosworth, Delta Integrale, etc…

I do not include more recent M cars that had race car equivalents as, truthfully, these race cars were not really race car homologations from road cars, but bespoke racers using elements of the road cars (which actually came first)… Those three I mentioned were cars built because they had to be built to race them…

Other early "M" cars seemed to recognise this distinction between whether or not a car was there to homologate or not in their naming... Using motorsport derived engines and/or knowledge in street cars not designed for race homologation, the first "not an M car M car" was arguably the M535i followed by the (now) highly sought after M635i...

(the M635i was known as the M6 in the USA, and this is possibly where the marketing aspects of M branding started to come in)

The M cars that followed these early ones seem to start the trend towards using the "M" as the halo model in some of the ranges in the line up...

The current M cars seem almost over the top when compared to an E30 M3 (for instance)… I actually feel the M-Lite cars are closer in spirit to an E30 M3 (and I owed one, so have my own terms of reference) whereas the M cars have become a range within a brand… and I get this, when comparing to Audi’s RS and Mercedes’ AMG cars…

We may never see another M car like the E30 M3 as racing does not seem to want to work like that anymore… The link to “product” is more a marketing strategy (like VW’s TCR Golfs… these were not homologation cars built to race in TCR, they used VW’s racing in TCR - now abandoned - to brand a special edition model)…

It bothers me not that M branding has spread across the range, so we have m styling influenced M-Sport models, M-lite models and full blown M cars... Makes sense to have a defined pattern...

... and BMW can use their branding however they see fit...

Just a few musings for a Tuesday morning…